English

In English this week we have continued to learn how to describe characters. Last week we described characters directly using figurative and descriptive language. This week, we have been learning some new skills. We have learnt how we can further describe the character through the dialogue they take part in and also through the narrator's viewpoint. Using our class text called Wizards of Once we have been showing what some of the characters are like (Wish, Rush and Xar) by writing dialogue between them. For example, we have shown that Xar is a confident, quite arrogant character who does not like to listen to other people's ideas and that Rush is under his control and is much more weak-minded and far less brave than Xar. Next week, we will be moving on to describing some of the amazing settings in the book.

Maths

In maths this week we have been really testing our brains as we have worked on our addition and subtraction of numbers using mental methods (calculating in our heads). The children have learnt that we can use some strategies to help us. These have been:

- Looking for near doubles e.g. 7 + 8 is near to double 7 so do double 7 and add one more.

- Looking for 5s that can add to make a ten e.g. 365 + 185 = the 5 and 5 can be added to make a ten, 80 and 60 makes 140 so add the other ten from the 5+5 to get 150, and then finally add the 400 so we end up with 550.

- Looking for near multiples of ten e.g. 86 - 39 = In this calculation the 39 is very close to 40 so subtract 40 from 86 which is 46 and then add one back on as we took away one too many, to get 47.

We have also been using these methods to add and subtract decimal numbers mentally.

On Thursday, the children completed a scavenger hunt where they were adding decimal numbers mentally to find clues:

Topic

This week we have begun a new topic about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here he is with some of his artwork:

    

Basquiat was a young artist from America. We will be completing a piece of artwork each week this term based on his artwork. This week we have used crayons, as Basquiat did, to recreate one of his pieces. We learnt about colour and tone. Here are some finished pictures. I think you'll agree they are incredible.

We have also learnt that Basquiat comes from The Caribbean and we have located some of the Caribbean Islands on different scale maps, learnt about the geographical features (physical and human) of the islands and compared them to the UK.